Migrating Apple Music Playlists to Spotify

Written by: Rivaldi Last updated: 2025-07-24

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🔥 Purpose

Migrate all songs from Apple Music to Spotify without third-party tools like SongShift. Just Python and the Spotify API.

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📦 Tools & Libraries

• Python 3.13 (use virtual environment)
• Spotipy (Spotify Web API library)
• Apple Music (manually exported playlists)
• playlisttotxt.py to parse Apple Music XML
• migrator.py to transfer songs to Spotify

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🧰 Initial Setup with initpyenv.sh

Run the following script to automatically set up the environment:

chmod +x initpyenv.sh
./initpyenv.sh

This script will:

• Create a virtual environment
• Install dependencies: spotipy, requests
• Automatically activate the environment

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🧠 Migration Workflow

1. Export Apple Music Playlist (Mac):

   • Open Music.app
   • Click playlist → File > Library > Export Playlist → choose XML

2. Run playlisttotxt.py:

   python3 playlisttotxt.py path/to/exported_playlist.xml

   Output: playlist.txt

3. Run migrator.py to transfer songs to Spotify

   python3 migrator.py

   The script will:

   • Add songs to "Liked Songs"
   • Skip songs that are already added
   • Log failed songs in gagal.txt
   • Log existing songs in skipped.txt

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🎫 About Spotify Client ID & Secret

To use this script, you must have access to the Spotify Developer Console to use their API.

Steps:

1. Visit: https://developer.spotify.com/dashboard

2. Log in with your Spotify account

3. Click Create App → enter name and description

4. Once created, you’ll get:

   • Client ID
   • Client Secret

⚠️ Insert both values manually into migrator.py:

auth = SpotifyOAuth(
    client_id="YOUR_CLIENT_ID",
    client_secret="YOUR_CLIENT_SECRET",
    redirect_uri="http://127.0.0.1:8888/callback",
    scope="playlist-modify-public user-library-read user-library-modify"
)

Without this, the script won’t be able to access your Spotify account.

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📂 File Structure

Music-Migrator/
├── initpyenv.sh
├── playlisttotxt.py        # parses XML to txt
├── migrator.py             # reads playlist.txt and transfers the songs to Spotify
├── playlist.txt            # output from playlisttotxt.py
├── gagal.txt               # songs that failed to transfer
└── skipped.txt             # songs already in your Spotify library

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🛠️ Script Features

• Fuzzy search (matches based on similarity or typos)
• Auto-skip if song already exists
• Retry request on timeout
• Logging to txt files
• Auto-opens Spotify "Liked Songs" after migration

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🪲 Bugs & Solutions

1. 403: Insufficient client scope

Issue:

403 Client Error: Forbidden for url: https://api.spotify.com/v1/me/tracks/contains

Solution: Ensure full scope is set:

scope="playlist-modify-public user-library-read user-library-modify"

Then remove .cache* to re-login:

rm .cache*

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2. Request timeout (ReadTimeoutError)

Issue:

Read timed out. (read timeout=5)

Solution:

• Set requests_timeout=15
• Add time.sleep(0.5) between requests
• Retry song search up to 3 times if failed

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3. Playlist appears empty on Spotify

Issue: Playlist seems empty even though it was processed successfully
Solution: Ensure migrator.py uses:

sp.current_user_saved_tracks_add([track_id])

The script doesn't create a new playlist, it adds songs directly to "Liked Songs"

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✅ Final Output

• Songs from Apple Music successfully added to "Liked Songs" in Spotify
• Failed songs → gagal.txt
• Skipped songs → skipped.txt
• Spotify "Liked Songs" opens automatically in browser

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✨ Development Roadmap

• Auto-parse XML without manual export
• GUI with drag-and-drop playlist
• Export logs to CSV
• Preview/dry-run mode before transfer

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🤝 Contribution

Since I'm the type of person who often switches between music streaming services and gets tired of transferring songs manually one by one, I finally created my own automation solution. The process is designed to be flexible and reusable anytime, with three main components:

• initpyenv.sh
• playlisttotxt.py
• migrator.py